Agnes of Orlamünde

AGNESE d'ORLAMÜNDE. - Cistercian nun, widely known in the German legend of the Dama bianca (v. weisse Frau v), born in an unspecified year into the family of the dukes of Merania and married to Otto III of Orlamünde. Upon her husband’s death, she rashly became inflamed with love for Albert of Nuremberg, in order to follow whom she did not hesitate to kill her two children. Remorse for these crimes pursued her and led her to turn to God and to make worthy reparation through works of piety. In 1280 she founded the Cistercian monastery of Himmelskron, in the diocese of Bamberg (Bavaria), of which she was elected abbess and where, it was said, she attained a high degree of spiritual perfection and died in 1343. She is also said to have possessed the gift of prophecy, if the account of the legend of the Dama bianca is true, according to which she foretold the great fortune of the Hohenzollern. She had no cult, or, if she did have one among some persons, it was not recognized by the Church. The legend recounting her story presents variants of importance, to which the admirers and genealogists of the Hohenzollern were not strangers (cf. A. Bigelmair, s. V. in LThK, I, cols. 140–41). Luigi Berra